same way they got Mig 21/3/5/7/9’s, Su-27s and Mi-24’s and Mi-8’s-former warsaw pact and soviet republics selling all for hard currency!

Actually I’m pretty sure the only MiG-25 we’ve gotten our hands on was due to digging around in Saddam’s backyard…literally 😀

But it’s still not flying against the systems it would encounter in an actual conflict (they would for the most part be a generation behind the current top-end threats, which are for the most part already deployed and will proliferate further very rapidly) and that’s all I’m trying to say here.

There are emitters in place that simulate threat systems we don’t actually have our hands on. Without firing a missile, that’s all you need to simulate a certain threat system. Some of them are even modeled to actually represent the system they’re simulating as well, probably to make it a little more real for the low-level flyers or pilots simulating the use of IIR or TV guided weapons. With all of the ELINT collecting we get up to I’d assume that there aren’t many systems we dont simulate. If I had to venture a guess I’d say that the only two serious systems potentially not simulated are the S-400 and maybe the HQ-9.

Also, purely out of interest, how did they get their hands on an S-300PS?

No idea but I’m sure it was some sort of backdoor purchase. It probably wasn’t East German as those systems were “reappropriated” by Russia when the wall came down. The Baltic states have loads of empty S-300P sites, maybe it came from there?

In the 1st post, the 1st and 3rd pic are fake’s. Those 2 pic showing the plane on the tarmac are not real plane, but rather scaled mockup’s.

No, that’s the refurbished YF-23 prototype. It’s sitting on the ramp in front of the USAF Museum’s restoration facility, the museum complex can be seen in the background.

Would be interesting to see how much different a F-23 would look these days, compared to the demonstrators.

Longer nose due to the inclusion of the forward AIM-9 bay not found on the demonstrators, and shallower overfuselage engine fairings as the provision for TVC components would have been removed.

The YF-22 was considered to be much closer to production ready form than the YF-23

It had more to do with the USAF feeling that Lockheed was in a better position to deliver the production aircraft on time and on budget. Northrop hadn’t attempted a large scale program like this for some time.

that largely bears out today since today’s -22 is nearly indistinguishable from the prototype.

Are you kidding me? The entire nose section has been reprofiled, the intakes have been slid to the rear along the fuselage, the wing sweep was changed, the wing and tail outlines were changed…the YF-22 underwent a lot of evolution to get to the production configuration.

Another reason in the F-22’s favor was it’s greater maneuverability……this was 1990 after all…..over the YF-23.

OK, the problem here is that a lot of the performance data on the YF-23 has remained classified. It is known that both demonstrators met the USAF’s requirements for agility, stealth, and performance. It has been reported that the YF-22 was the more agile of the two, but the YF-23 was more stealthy and faster. Some have claimed that it was SIGNIFICANTLY faster, with the GE engined bird rumored to have supercruised past Mach 2 and had a top speed in the Mach 2.5+ range. I think the publicly reported supercruise figure for the YF-23 was somewhere between Mach 1.6 and 1.8. That absurd performance might have been a negative in the eyes of the USAF as it relied on GE’s more advanced variable-cycle engine, a risky venture that the USAF didn’t proceed with either. But regardless both jets in both of their variants did in fact meet all of the stated requirements for the program, so the USAF looked to other factors to make a production decision.

NOT US, not the Germans and NOT a LOT of European people BTW even Britain went to war with a majority of its folks against it.

European opinion should not be a reason for the US to go to war or not go to war. If the administration feels war is justified, they have the political duty to execute it regardless of what non-citizens think. Do I fault Europeans for having anti-war opinions? Of course not. I just don’t think they should ever be a reason for America to avoid doing something that it thinks is in its best interest for whatever reason.

ANYWAY.

It was more drive home the point that targets will be equipped with an ole AK-47 or a stick, instead of latest SAM batteries, and therefore a B-2/F-22 is dumb ruining expensive overkill.
Not to put words in SOC’s mouth, but i’m as sure as i can get that that what was he meant, and i agree.

That’s exactly what I meant. You’ll still have the F-22 armed with SDBs or JDAMs when needed, and will still have long endurance UCAVs like the Reaper, so adding the JSF to a low intensity conflict is just pure overkill. Seriously, somebody point out a logical environment where the jet will serve a purpose that cannot be performed by another platform in the inventory or a far cheaper asset like a COIN/CAS type.

Good luck waiting 45 minutes for your prop or UCAV to arrive. Listen, go speak to troops who have fought out there, they DO NOT appeciate the thought of some dumb a** slow prop plane taking 45 mins to arrive and would rather a fast mover show up in 5 or 10 minutes and blend the group of sometimes up to 250 very heavily armed ‘goat herders’ to mush.

Most on-station CAS assets are either fast jets (typically F-16s out of Balad) in orbits in the area or UCAVs like Reaper on patrol already. A “slow prop plane” could be in either position as well. Plus, they usually drop one or two small weapons. An ordnance loadout not out of reach for the proposed aircraft, which I believe is intended to mount two Hellfires and two of something else. I’ll try and find the damn article I read in the Air Force Times, I can’t find it on the web anywhere.

The Russian PAK-FA will likely be designed to operate without serious GCI inputs as well, else you’re giving away your position by datalinking data or communicating back and forth with the GCI station!

Which would be…?

RED FLAG. Pilots who have subsequently gone to war have credited RED FLAG with being more intense than the real thing, which is the point of the exercise.

The EF (and Rafale) where designed to stay over friendly airspace and shoot down enemy planes approaching that airspace.

So carrier-based Rafales were intended to fly over France?

Pak-FA und J-XX however seem to follow the american design and will render the european fighters obsolete

Not necessarily. Rafale and EF-2000 are here now, while the J-XX and PAK-FA are probably at least a decade away from serious squadron service. The J-XX is basically irrelevant as nobody in the Pacific theater seems keen on buying a Eurocanard when they can get a FLANKER or F-15 variant instead, but the PAK-FA should be a serious problem if it achieves the goal of Raptor-style stealth characteristics.

From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, the YF-22 looked like a stealthed up F-15, while the YF-23 looked like what a 21st Century fighter should be!

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